Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King

By Audrey Truschke

The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir is one of the most hated men in Indian history. Widely reviled as a religious fanatic who sought to violently oppress Hindus, he is even blamed by some for setting into motion conflicts that would result in the creation of a separate Muslim state in South Asia. In her lively overview of his life and influence, Audrey Truschke offers a clear-eyed perspective on the public debate over Aurangzeb and makes the case for why his often-maligned legacy deserves to be reassessed.

Aurangzeb was arguably the most powerful and wealthiest ruler of his day. His nearly 50-year reign (1658–1707) had a profound influence on the political landscape of early modern India, and his legacy—real and imagined—continues to loom large in India and Pakistan today. Truschke evaluates Aurangzeb not by modern standards but according to the traditions and values of his own time, painting a picture of Aurangzeb as a complex figure whose relationship to Islam was dynamic, strategic, and sometimes contradictory. This book invites students of South Asian history and religion into the world of the Mughal Empire, framing the contemporary debate on Aurangzeb's impact and legacy in accessible and engaging terms.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Release date: May 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781503602595

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Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

©2017 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Truschke, Audrey, author.

Title: Aurangzeb : the life and legacy of India’s most controversial king / Audrey Truschke.

Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016049916 (print) | LCCN 2016050556 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503602038 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503602571 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503602595 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503602595 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Aurangzeb, Emperor of Hindustan, 1618-1707. | Aurangzeb, Emperor of Hindustan, 1618-1707—Relations with Hindus. | Mogul Empire—Kings and rulers—Biography.

Classification: LCC DS461.7 .T78 2016 (print) | LCC DS461.7 (ebook) | DDC 954.02/58092 [B] —dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049916

Designed by Bruce Lundquist

Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/15 Adobe Caslon

AURANGZEB

The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King

AUDREY TRUSCHKE

Stanford University Press

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

For mom

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface and Acknowledgments

Note on Scholarly Conventions

Time Line

1. Introducing Aurangzeb

2. Early Years

3. The Grand Arc of Aurangzeb’s Reign

4. Administrator of Hindustan

5. Moral Man and Leader

6. Overseer of Hindu Religious Communities

7. Later Years

8. Aurangzeb’s Legacy

Postscript: A Note on Reading Medieval Persian Texts

Bibliographical Essay

Notes

Index

Illustrations

Map. The Mughal Empire in 1707

1. The Battle of Samugarh

2. Emperor Aurangzeb in a Shaft of Light

3. Badshahi Masjid in Lahore

4. Portrait of the Emperor Aurangzeb

5. Emperor Aurangzeb at the Shrine of Muinuddin Chishti

6. Emperor Aurangzeb at the Siege of Golconda

7. Emperor Aurangzeb Carried on a Palanquin

Preface and Acknowledgments

This book began with a Twitter message asking if I wanted to write an accessible biography of one of the Mughal kings. The discussion quickly migrated to email, and I settled on Aurangzeb Alamgir as the subject. That this book was first formulated via social media is appropriate because the Aurangzeb fever that has gripped modern India often surfaces most virulently on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. In this short biography I address Aurangzeb’s vibrant, ongoing presence in popular culture. From a historian’s point of view, however, Aurangzeb is first and foremost a Mughal king about whom most people know lamentably little. This book is an attempt to introduce the historical Aurangzeb—in all of his complexity—to a wide readership.

For the sake of narrative flow and ease of reading, the text is presented without footnotes. It is already difficult to get at Aurangzeb’s life and ruling strategies, and footnotes would have posed yet another obstacle. Readers who want to know my sources will find the information in the Bibliographical Essay and the Notes. The Postscript will interest those who desire to learn more about how historians think about the past and analyze premodern sources.

.   .   .

I owe many debts of gratitude in writing this short book. For sharing unpublished work on Aurangzeb, I thank Allison Busch, Munis Faruqui, Supriya Gandhi, Anne Murphy, Heidi Pauwels, Yael Rice, Samira Sheikh, and Cynthia Talbot. I also thank Yael Rice for her help with images in the book, especially for discovering the Mead Art Museum painting of Aurangzeb, and I look forward to her future work on this image. I thank the following for feedback, comments, and assistance at various stages of this project: Qamar Adamjee, Purnima Dhavan, Wendy Doniger, Richard Eaton, Munis Faruqui, Thomas Blom Hansen, Santhi Kavuri-Bauer, Azfar Moin, Sheldon Pollock, Simran Jeet Singh, Anand Taneja, Taymiya Zaman, and the Stanford Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship. All opinions, arguments, and errors in this book are mine alone.

Writing about Aurangzeb, one of the most hated men in Indian history, is no light decision, and I owe a special acknowledgment in this regard. My heartfelt gratitude to those who advised me to write the book when I wavered about whether to do so—you know who you are, and I am much obliged.

Note on Scholarly Conventions

Readers will find the following text free of footnotes and diacritics. I detail my sources in the Bibliographical Essay and the Notes. I give non-English words and names in their most common Romanized form and generally omit special characters.

Time Line of Select Events from Aurangzeb’s Life and Reign

CHAPTER 1

Introducing Aurangzeb

Unforgettable Aurangzeb

I came as a stranger, and I leave as a stranger.

—Aurangzeb, letter written on the verge of death

When the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb looked back at his life in 1707 at the ripe age of eighty-eight, he saw failure.

From his deathbed Aurangzeb penned several poignant letters to his sons voicing his gravest fears, including that God would punish his impiety. But, most of all, he lamented his flaws as a king. To his youngest son, Kam Bakhsh, he expressed anxiety that his officers and army would be ill-treated after his death. To his third son, Azam Shah, he admitted deeper doubts: I entirely lacked in rulership and protecting the people. My precious life has passed in vain. God is here, but my dimmed eyes do not see his splendor.

Aurangzeb ruled for forty-nine years over a population of 150 million people. He expanded the Mughal Empire to its greatest extent, subsuming most of the Indian subcontinent under a single imperial power for the first time in human history. He made lasting contributions to the interpretation and exercise of legal codes and was renowned—by people of all backgrounds and religious stripes—for his justice. He was quite possibly the richest man of his day and boasted a treasury overflowing with gems, pearls, and gold, including the spectacular Kohinoor diamond. But these accomplishments failed to assuage his angst about his political deficiencies in his final days.

To both Azam Shah and Kam Bakhsh, Aurangzeb also confessed his religious shortcomings and the bitter divine judgment he believed he would soon face. A devout Muslim, he thought that he had chosen isolation from God both in this life and the next. And while he came into the world unburdened, he flinched at the idea of entering the afterlife saddled with the weight of his sins. He ended his final letter to Azam with an evocative, lingering flourish, pronouncing his farewell thrice, Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

.   .   .

Aurangzeb exited this world more than three hundred years ago, in the winter of 1707. He was buried in a simple, open-air grave in Khuldabad, Maharashtra. In contrast to Humayun’s imposing tomb of red sandstone in Delhi or Shah Jahan’s lavish resting place at the magnificent Taj Mahal in Agra, Aurangzeb’s grave made no demand that he be remembered. In accordance with Aurangzeb’s wishes, the tomb was plain and unmarked, located within a Sufi shrine. Over the centuries, marble floors were added, as well as a marble railing and an identifying plaque. Even with these embellishments, however, the modesty of Aurangzeb’s tomb issues a strong contrast to the massive blocks of stone that boldly proclaim the burial sites and earthly legacies of his predecessors.

Aurangzeb may have been content to be forgotten, but the world is not ready to let him go. Aurangzeb lives on as a vibrant figure in public memory in twenty-first-century India and Pakistan. In India people hotly debate his reign and often condemn him as a vile oppressor of Hindus. Whereas Aurangzeb questioned his legacy, many Indians today have no doubt that he was a zealous bigot who ruled by the sword and left behind a trail of Hindu tears. Recent political attempts to erase Aurangzeb from the face of modern India—such as by renaming Aurangzeb Road in Delhi—have injected new life into debates about this emperor and India’s Islamic past. In nearby Pakistan Aurangzeb fares only slightly better. Some follow the Indian line that Aurangzeb was a straight-up bigot, whereas others view him as one of the few truly righteous Muslim rulers of old. Precious little history surfaces in these modern visions.

Rather, as misinformation and condemnations of Aurangzeb swirl about twenty-first-century South Asia, the man himself remains an enigma.

.   .   .

Aurangzeb was the sixth ruler of the Mughal Empire, a polity of vast proportions. Although the world outside of the subcontinent rarely recalls the Mughals today, in their time they were a subject of intense fascination and awe. By 1600, the population of the Mughal kingdom outstripped the entirety of Europe, and Mughal wealth was unmatched in the world. Aurangzeb rose to power in 1658 in the midst of a bloody war of succession that left two of his brothers dead, a third exiled to Burma, and his father imprisoned. Aurangzeb named himself the Seizer of the World (Alamgir) and lived up to the title by seizing kingdom after kingdom during his forty-nine-year reign.

Even during his lifetime, Aurangzeb captured imaginations across the world. In 1675 John Dryden, then poet laureate of England, penned Aureng-zebe, a heroic tragedy about the reigning Mughal sovereign. Meanwhile, European travelers traversed India in increasing numbers, and many sought an audience with the famed Aurangzeb Alamgir. British, Dutch, Portuguese, and French traders established operations in pockets of the subcontinent and pursued trade agreements with the Mughals. From a Mughal perspective, however, Europeans were small fish. Aurangzeb, like his predecessors, was preoccupied with ruling one of the largest empires in world history, a kingdom encompassing 3.2 million square kilometers (roughly the size of modern India) and esteemed for its riches, prosperity, and religious and cultural diversity.

The Mughal Empire in 1707. Reproduced with permission from Juggernaut Books.

Unlike other Mughal rulers, who have attracted significant attention from historians, Aurangzeb has been neglected over the past several decades. The task of capturing the life of this king, about whom we know surprisingly little, is far from straightforward. Aurangzeb was a complex

Reviews for Aurangzeb

[Haider Ali · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the great leaders, should be read by muslims who are looking to study great leaders and learn.

[BigPremiumJ4U202223 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Full of lies and absurd theories. Author tried her best to defend the barbaric mughal invader who was responsible for the genocide of native hindus.

[Rajeev Lakra · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The writers breathes life to the characters and the era described is so realistic .. I’m amazed that such use of language can make this reading so much interesting.